Newport, Aquidneck Island, RI
2 September 2013
If you're a regular reader of this blog and of Tom's, you'll notice that I was not mentioned in any of the posts of this year's late-summer bike trip.
Because I am a doofus. A doofus that has a bit of trouble putting important dates into her calendar. A doofus who scheduled two vacations at once.
I chose the non-refundable one, the one involving buying non-refundable Amtrak tickets in order not to lose my frequent-rider points accumulated during my commuting days, made non-refundable hotel reservations in Providence, Rhode Island, and met two of our college roommates for a long weekend.
By "roommates" I mean suite-mates, which is probably why, after 25 years, we still talk to each other. Andrew lives in Boston. Chris lives in Dedham, a Boston suburb a mere half hour away from Providence. Half an hour in no traffic, that is, which, if you know anything about Boston, is something that can only happen early on a Saturday morning. That's when she drove down.
Jack and I had checked in the night before, just as a Rocky Horror Picture Show convention was ending. There were three of us at the front desk going, "Aw, man, missed it!"
We walked up to Federal Hill for dinner. Federal Hill is half a mile of nothing but restaurants (mostly Italian), valet parking, motorcycles, cruising, and people who are there to see and be seen. We found a Lebanese place. We were surrounded by hookahs. The tobacco smelled sweet.
We were staying at one of those conference-style hotels, with escalators, ballrooms, and expensive breakfasts. We had the expensive breakfast. It was good. So was the coffee.
Chris does mysterious software security stuff, but she's really an artist, or would be if a million dollars would land on her doorstep so that she could quit her job once and for all. For now the most she can do is dabble, taking classes in glassblowing and printmaking and neon and lord knows what else. So while Jack lost himself in a worthy used bookstore -- any bookstore where Jack's haul is so large he has it shipped home is worthy -- and a wine store he said he'd have to return to, Chris and I strolled the new-ish downtown Arts District. I spent lots of money at Craftland, where everything was handmade and just a little off. I walked away with a pile of magnets only scientists and literature professors could love, plus a very expensive bracelet by Patricia Locke that I'm going to have to wear every day in order to justify the cost.
In another store we saw this:
I did not buy it. Gay moose, yes. Gay moose with bowties, sure. Hearts, deal-breaker.
Extreme hipster fixie:
After a dirt-cheap Mexican lunch next to a printmaking studio, we were off to the RISD Museum. We stopped on the bridge over the Providence River so that I could get a picture of the set-up for the night's WaterFire event.
The museum was big enough to keep us entertained for a few hours, yet small enough to keep me from getting past the first signs of museum glut.
We continued up the hill -- granny gear territory, Swan, Franklin, Poor Farm -- towards Thayer Street. The last time Jack and I were here, probably close to a decade ago, Thayer Street was several blocks of indie stores. Not anymore.
Chris notices things.
On our way back out, she said, "I want to get a picture of that telephone pole we passed before."
"Which?"
"The one with all the staples in it."
I stopped for sunflowers.
We wound up on Federal Hill again for dinner, sitting outside as the sun set and the motorcycles cruised past with blue and green LEDs illuminating their polished bodies. After that, Chris went home and Jack and I wandered towards the river to witness WaterFire.
An almost weekly event during the warmer months, WaterFire is the sort of thing I'm glad I've seen but have no desire to witness again.
I mean, yeah, the pyres are hypnotic and kinda cool to stare at for a while. But the piped-in, new-age muzak is too much. And the banks of the river are crowded.
Still, I had fun seeing what my camera could do on its own:
A gondola-style boat carrying rows of black-clad volunteers passed up and down the river, each volunteer loading two pieces of wood onto each pyre as the boat passed. Their coordination was impressive. Even the retrieval of a dropped log seemed precisely timed, the log thrown back into the pyre before it had much of a chance to get wet.
At this point my eyes were starting to burn. I wondered what I was inhaling.
Sparks flew.
In a glade, people paid for stars to support WaterFire:
I waited for a gaggle of obnoxiously drunk, middle-aged women to shut up and make room on a bridge so that I could catch the bend in the river. It was worth the wait.
The next morning, Andrew and Chris met us at the hotel. Andrew was driving. Newport had been his suggestion. A project manager by trade, Andrew had sent me a page of suggestions for the trip. I was impressed. The most I'd done when the idea of Newport came up was look at a map of it and think, "This is gonna be under water in a hundred years."
Andrew suggested walking around town first. We stopped at a waterfront restaurant for lunch. It wasn't exactly scenic, but it was less obnoxious-looking than, say, Belmar.
We spent much longer than I thought we would just walking in and out of the shops. I didn't mind because we were catching up with each others' lives.
We've stayed in touch since college. Chris and Andrew are among the oldest friends I have. I met both of them before I met Jack. Chris was in Jack's math class. I met Andrew at an ice skating evening. We were all in the same dorm. There was a cat, owned by the grad student living next to Andrew and Jack, who spent most of his permitted hallway time in the living room of Jack's suite. Chris met the cat. Chris said I needed to meet the cat. I went with her to meet the cat. She didn't really want me to meet the cat as much as she wanted me to meet Jack, which I did, and blah blah blah we've been married for over 24 years my god I'm old.
Anyway.
The posh part of Newport, along the coast, where the houses make Rumson look like Levittown:
A herring gull strutted his (her?) stuff.
I climbed down onto the rocks.
Jack, Andrew, and Chris stayed by the road, with two gulls:
Are those rocks really white?
Cormorants and guano.
In the distance, two cyclists, pushed by a righteous tailwind:
Yep, still hanging out.
We drove back to Providence, had a very bad meal at a very bad Thai restaurant, and then Andrew drove us back to the hotel. Only we were so engrossed in conversation that he drove right on into Massachusetts before Chris gently reminded him that he had to drop us off first.
We'll be back up that way, Boston this time, in mid-October. Chris and I are going to a bead show, then the three of us are going to see Mike Doughty in concert. At some point, Chris and Andrew are going to take me to a glass-blowing class. We might make Jack come too.
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